Today Alexis and I are loading up the hounds and heading down to Houston for my first triathlon of the season. I am taking a half day off to pack up, get in one last run, and make sure we take everything we need for the race on Sunday.
Yesterday, I rented a wet suit. I had never tried one on before so it was a new experience. When I got home, I put it back on to show Alexis, and I wore it for about ten minutes. That ten minute span was enough for me to sweat in it a little and it was tough tough tough to get off. It will be interesting to see how it comes off after swimming 500 meters on Sunday.
My plan for today is to leave work at lunch time, pack the car, then run a couple (2-3) miles, then double check what I packed and make sure I have everything I need for the race.
Talk to you after the race!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Run, Bike, Run
My first race of the season has come and gone. Here is a rundown of what happened.
My day started bright and early around 5 am. We needed to leave around 6:15 to get to the race with plenty of time to spare. Our thermometer said the air temperature was 35 degrees. That is about 35 degrees colder than I like to ride in. Oh well, I was committed; I pleaded with Alexis but she would not let me back out due to the cold..
Alexis and I loaded up and headed north of Fort Worth to Texas Motor Speedway (TMS).
For those of you who are not familiar with TMS it is our local NASCAR track. It holds over 100,000+ fans and hosts two NASCAR races per year. The track is about 2.5 miles around.
We arrived and we were instructed to go through a tunnel that lead to the infield of the track, this was very cool. When we emerged from the tunnel the super structure of TMS greeted us. It was very impressive. After getting our bearings we parked and headed over to the transition area (the area where the racers go when they transition from one leg of the race to another). The current temp was still in the 30’s. Very cold. Alexis and I were both dressed in layers, but my layers were only temporary. I only had a cotton t-shirt under my racing jersey and nothing over or under my cycling shorts. I was thinking that I would be very cold.
I tried to do some light stretching and some light jogging to warm up, but what I really needed to warm-up was the shot of adrenalin that comes from the starting gun.
My heat was first, men 19-39. We had to listen to a pre-race meeting and some final course instructions, I should have been stretching and getting ready. As soon as the meeting was over we were told to line up for the start. I quickly went to my spot in the transition area to take off my warm-up clothes, that’s when the gun sounded. Oops! I wasn’t close to the starting line. I threw off the rest of my warm-ups and ran to catch up. I am sure I looked stupid.
With the race underway, I started to pass some of the slower runners. The cold was not bothering me at all. We had to do two loops around a track inside of the main NASCAR track. Each loop was about 1 mile. When my two laps were finished and I was running into the transition area, I saw the official time was just over 15 minutes. I had just run two miles at about a 7:40 pace, very strong for me.
In the transition area, I took off my running shoes and beanie. I put on my cycling shoes and helmet and I was out of the transition area in a minute, thirty. The cycling portion was about 16 miles. There is a loop around the outside of TMS called Victory Circle, we had to do it three times. I started out at about 21 mph for about 3 miles, then I realized I needed to slow down so I would have something left at the end. I tried to keep my speed around 18 mph. That was fast enough, but I wasn’t over-working myself. After about 3 miles, I cooled down from the two miles I had just run. That’s when the cold started to set in. By the end of the bike portion, my fingers were numb and I could not feel my toes either. As I approached the transition area at the end of the bike portion I saw Alexis run to the front of the group of spectators. She cheered and snapped some pictures of me as I rode by.
I entered the transition area, I was cold, tired and still had to run two more miles. My numb toes made the first ¾ of a mile difficult. I felt like I was barely moving, but no one was passing me, so I could not have been doing that bad. This two miles seemed longer than the first two. I was getting tired. But with about a half mile to go, I decided I would pass a couple of guys who seemed to be out of gas. I kicked into a higher gear to finish the race. I was not about 75 yards from the finish line and I could see the official time, I was at about an hour and twenty five minutes. When I saw that I was relieved, my goal was to finish in less than an hour and a half. And I did.
My second two miles were faster than my first two at about 7.30 per mile. I averaged 18.4 mph on the bike. I came in 147 overall and 7 in my class (out of 17). Including men, women and children there were 350 racers, so I finished in the top half. My official time was 1 hour, twenty five minutes and some seconds. I barely beat the entire field average.
This was a good warm-up for my first triathlon of the season this coming weekend. Recent readings of the lake temperature have been around 60 degrees. This week’s tri will be a 500 meter swim, 11 mile bike and 5k run.
My day started bright and early around 5 am. We needed to leave around 6:15 to get to the race with plenty of time to spare. Our thermometer said the air temperature was 35 degrees. That is about 35 degrees colder than I like to ride in. Oh well, I was committed; I pleaded with Alexis but she would not let me back out due to the cold..
Alexis and I loaded up and headed north of Fort Worth to Texas Motor Speedway (TMS).
For those of you who are not familiar with TMS it is our local NASCAR track. It holds over 100,000+ fans and hosts two NASCAR races per year. The track is about 2.5 miles around.
We arrived and we were instructed to go through a tunnel that lead to the infield of the track, this was very cool. When we emerged from the tunnel the super structure of TMS greeted us. It was very impressive. After getting our bearings we parked and headed over to the transition area (the area where the racers go when they transition from one leg of the race to another). The current temp was still in the 30’s. Very cold. Alexis and I were both dressed in layers, but my layers were only temporary. I only had a cotton t-shirt under my racing jersey and nothing over or under my cycling shorts. I was thinking that I would be very cold.
I tried to do some light stretching and some light jogging to warm up, but what I really needed to warm-up was the shot of adrenalin that comes from the starting gun.
My heat was first, men 19-39. We had to listen to a pre-race meeting and some final course instructions, I should have been stretching and getting ready. As soon as the meeting was over we were told to line up for the start. I quickly went to my spot in the transition area to take off my warm-up clothes, that’s when the gun sounded. Oops! I wasn’t close to the starting line. I threw off the rest of my warm-ups and ran to catch up. I am sure I looked stupid.
With the race underway, I started to pass some of the slower runners. The cold was not bothering me at all. We had to do two loops around a track inside of the main NASCAR track. Each loop was about 1 mile. When my two laps were finished and I was running into the transition area, I saw the official time was just over 15 minutes. I had just run two miles at about a 7:40 pace, very strong for me.
In the transition area, I took off my running shoes and beanie. I put on my cycling shoes and helmet and I was out of the transition area in a minute, thirty. The cycling portion was about 16 miles. There is a loop around the outside of TMS called Victory Circle, we had to do it three times. I started out at about 21 mph for about 3 miles, then I realized I needed to slow down so I would have something left at the end. I tried to keep my speed around 18 mph. That was fast enough, but I wasn’t over-working myself. After about 3 miles, I cooled down from the two miles I had just run. That’s when the cold started to set in. By the end of the bike portion, my fingers were numb and I could not feel my toes either. As I approached the transition area at the end of the bike portion I saw Alexis run to the front of the group of spectators. She cheered and snapped some pictures of me as I rode by.
I entered the transition area, I was cold, tired and still had to run two more miles. My numb toes made the first ¾ of a mile difficult. I felt like I was barely moving, but no one was passing me, so I could not have been doing that bad. This two miles seemed longer than the first two. I was getting tired. But with about a half mile to go, I decided I would pass a couple of guys who seemed to be out of gas. I kicked into a higher gear to finish the race. I was not about 75 yards from the finish line and I could see the official time, I was at about an hour and twenty five minutes. When I saw that I was relieved, my goal was to finish in less than an hour and a half. And I did.
My second two miles were faster than my first two at about 7.30 per mile. I averaged 18.4 mph on the bike. I came in 147 overall and 7 in my class (out of 17). Including men, women and children there were 350 racers, so I finished in the top half. My official time was 1 hour, twenty five minutes and some seconds. I barely beat the entire field average.
This was a good warm-up for my first triathlon of the season this coming weekend. Recent readings of the lake temperature have been around 60 degrees. This week’s tri will be a 500 meter swim, 11 mile bike and 5k run.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Run, Bike, Swim
Swim, Bike, Run. Sounds easy enough. Especially when you do each one by itself. Who doesn’t enjoy piddling around in the pool (swim)? And everyone enjoys a nice ride around the block on their bike (bike). And who doesn’t like chase their dog at the park (run)? Like I said, when each is done separately, it’s relatively easy and paints a picture of a sunny weekend afternoon.
But what if all three are put together and not done in leisurely activities as described above? Then you have a triathlon! By this I mean swim a quarter mile, ride for 15 miles and then run about 3 miles.
I’ve done this before, and so has Diana and Daryl for that matter, but I was in college at the time. Things have changed since then. But Late 2008 I decided that triathlons were something that I wanted to get into again so I started running, biking and swimming.
Rewind to about this same time last year. I was at the doctor’s office for a cold or something and I weighed about 235. Not great. Over the course of the year I lost about 25-30 pounds of that. When I decided to start training I was between 205 and 210. Much better. This year alone, I have gotten down to somewhere between 205 and 200. When I finished college I was at about 205.
Training for me is almost an everyday occurrence. 4 days a week I go to the gym at lunch to work out or run. The remaining day I attend a Bible study, otherwise I would go 5 days per week. Most weekday evenings I will run again, take a spin class, swim, or go for a ride. I would say 3 days a week I do two-a-days and about 6 days a week I work out at least once.
When February rolled around, I decided to cut way back on the two vices that were holding me back. Pizza and beer. Why February? Because on March 1 I will be doing my first tri of the season down in Houston. I wanted to make sure I gave myself the best chance I could to get into even better shape. In fact, next weekend (Feb 22) I am doing a duathlon at Texas Motor Speedway which is a run, bike, run. Run 2, ride 15, run 2 more. That should pretty much have me ready for the tri the following weekend. The weekend after the tri, I will run a 4.5 mile leg of an 18 mile relay with a group from work. Then April 4 it is back to triathlons for another one at Moody Gardens in Galveston.
I will keep you posted on my progress as I prepare for the events. On Friday I will post a quick update of my activities for the week in preparation for this weekend's big race.
But what if all three are put together and not done in leisurely activities as described above? Then you have a triathlon! By this I mean swim a quarter mile, ride for 15 miles and then run about 3 miles.
I’ve done this before, and so has Diana and Daryl for that matter, but I was in college at the time. Things have changed since then. But Late 2008 I decided that triathlons were something that I wanted to get into again so I started running, biking and swimming.
Rewind to about this same time last year. I was at the doctor’s office for a cold or something and I weighed about 235. Not great. Over the course of the year I lost about 25-30 pounds of that. When I decided to start training I was between 205 and 210. Much better. This year alone, I have gotten down to somewhere between 205 and 200. When I finished college I was at about 205.
Training for me is almost an everyday occurrence. 4 days a week I go to the gym at lunch to work out or run. The remaining day I attend a Bible study, otherwise I would go 5 days per week. Most weekday evenings I will run again, take a spin class, swim, or go for a ride. I would say 3 days a week I do two-a-days and about 6 days a week I work out at least once.
When February rolled around, I decided to cut way back on the two vices that were holding me back. Pizza and beer. Why February? Because on March 1 I will be doing my first tri of the season down in Houston. I wanted to make sure I gave myself the best chance I could to get into even better shape. In fact, next weekend (Feb 22) I am doing a duathlon at Texas Motor Speedway which is a run, bike, run. Run 2, ride 15, run 2 more. That should pretty much have me ready for the tri the following weekend. The weekend after the tri, I will run a 4.5 mile leg of an 18 mile relay with a group from work. Then April 4 it is back to triathlons for another one at Moody Gardens in Galveston.
I will keep you posted on my progress as I prepare for the events. On Friday I will post a quick update of my activities for the week in preparation for this weekend's big race.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Brett Joins the Blue Angels
One thing I am always willing to do is to learn how to do something new. Whether it is how to play guitar, how to install things around the house or even something useless like how to play Rock Band, I am always up to learn something new. Because let’s face it, there is a lot that I don’t know. I don’t even know what I don’t know. You know?
In an effort to continue to learn new stuff I have set my sites on mastering the skies. I have started taking flying lessons. Alexis made reference to this endeavor in her Super Bowl blog. So here is the story of my first flight with an instructor.
There is a small, mostly corporate, airport near out house. Lear jets for corporate big-wigs fly in and out of this airport (Addison) as well as weekend warriors and small plane owners. For a small airport, it is one of the busiest in the country. Alexis and I always hear small aircraft buzzing around overhead.
I got there early Sunday morning, around 7 am. This was to be my first flight in a Cessna 172. The main purpose of this flight was not necessarily to teach, but to get the student hooked so the flight school could suck you in and keep taking your money. I’m guessing by the looks of their large and new fleet of planes that they were good at getting you hooked. The flight plan for the day was simple; I was to do all of the flying. That may not sound too bad if you have lots of experience flying, but my flying experience is limited to seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions.
The instructor readied the plane to taxiing and we climbed in. You are wondering if I am going to tell you about his instructions or lessons before we got in, well there were pretty much none. We get in and he stats the propeller. Then he tells me it is my job to taxi out to the run way, but he would talk to the tower for us. He tells me not to touch the yoke (steering wheel) but to use the pedals on the floor to steer the plane, so I do. As we approach the runway he gives me some last minute advice on how quickly to climb and at what speed to pull back on the yoke to lift us off. With no time to argue, or tell him he was an idiot for letting someone he just met fly, we started to build speed and charge down the runway. Once we hit 55 knots, I started to pull up; and then started to fly!!! We took off and headed east.
We had to stay below a certain altitude due to DFW airport being about 20 miles away. We climbed to 2000 feet. Everything looked familiar so at least I would have known what I was crashing into. But there was no crashing to be done today. As we flew he then took the time to explain what the instruments were that were in front of me; how to use them and what they did. Good things to know. We climbed to about 3000 feet and we were then out of DFW’s range so we were free to do whatever. We flew over some local lakes and continued to climb. We got up to about 5000 feet, which I did all by myself, he was just sitting in the seat next to me. It was very nice and much easier than I thought it would be.
In an effort to continue to learn new stuff I have set my sites on mastering the skies. I have started taking flying lessons. Alexis made reference to this endeavor in her Super Bowl blog. So here is the story of my first flight with an instructor.
There is a small, mostly corporate, airport near out house. Lear jets for corporate big-wigs fly in and out of this airport (Addison) as well as weekend warriors and small plane owners. For a small airport, it is one of the busiest in the country. Alexis and I always hear small aircraft buzzing around overhead.
I got there early Sunday morning, around 7 am. This was to be my first flight in a Cessna 172. The main purpose of this flight was not necessarily to teach, but to get the student hooked so the flight school could suck you in and keep taking your money. I’m guessing by the looks of their large and new fleet of planes that they were good at getting you hooked. The flight plan for the day was simple; I was to do all of the flying. That may not sound too bad if you have lots of experience flying, but my flying experience is limited to seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions.
The instructor readied the plane to taxiing and we climbed in. You are wondering if I am going to tell you about his instructions or lessons before we got in, well there were pretty much none. We get in and he stats the propeller. Then he tells me it is my job to taxi out to the run way, but he would talk to the tower for us. He tells me not to touch the yoke (steering wheel) but to use the pedals on the floor to steer the plane, so I do. As we approach the runway he gives me some last minute advice on how quickly to climb and at what speed to pull back on the yoke to lift us off. With no time to argue, or tell him he was an idiot for letting someone he just met fly, we started to build speed and charge down the runway. Once we hit 55 knots, I started to pull up; and then started to fly!!! We took off and headed east.
We had to stay below a certain altitude due to DFW airport being about 20 miles away. We climbed to 2000 feet. Everything looked familiar so at least I would have known what I was crashing into. But there was no crashing to be done today. As we flew he then took the time to explain what the instruments were that were in front of me; how to use them and what they did. Good things to know. We climbed to about 3000 feet and we were then out of DFW’s range so we were free to do whatever. We flew over some local lakes and continued to climb. We got up to about 5000 feet, which I did all by myself, he was just sitting in the seat next to me. It was very nice and much easier than I thought it would be.
The flying part seemed to be easy. The instructor suggested we try gliding. I didn’t really know what he meant until he idled the plane, which basically shut off the propeller and we started to glide. Gliding seems like a peaceful and relaxing task. No. Not for rookies. It’s terrifying. With the propeller not propelling the plane anymore we start fall. He is relaxed in his delivery of instructions, but there was quite a bit of urgency in my execution of his instructions. The feeling of a freefall in an airplane is not that pleasant. However, with his calm instructions I was able to make the plane glide, instead of fall. We were even able to climb and descend as we wanted to. While I was able to control the plane, I was still terrified and not at ease until he got the propeller cranked up again. I guess the scariest part was not knowing how to get the propeller going again incase he suddenly died. Gliding and landing on my first flight were definitely not things I could master in case of such an emergency. But I got through that unscathed and I deffinately learned from it.
After the gliding we continued to fly. We climbed back up and had a smooth uneventful return to Addison.
For the landing, he gave me instructions on where to go and how to approach the runway. I did all of the descent into the airport. Under power, descending is not bad at all. I lined up the plane for our final descent and got us to about 100 feet above the ground. Then, in the interest of both our lives, he took over and landed to plane smoothly; thanks of course, to my magnificent approach.
It was a great flight and it is something that I will for sure pursue, hopefully! A pilots license can take over a year to get, or as little as 6 months. I will probably be closer to a year since I can’t fly all the time (it’s expensive). It will take a while, but as long as I keep it on my mind, keep up with the studying, and do well when I actually do fly it is something that I will be able to do for years to come.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Super Bowl
First of all, congratulations to the Steelers!!
Brett started the day off by flying a plane...he can tell you about the experience later. I baked a dark chocolate fudge cake, hid it in the laundry room to cool and went to run some errands. Brett was gone for 20 minutes and came back inside to this...
Brett started the day off by flying a plane...he can tell you about the experience later. I baked a dark chocolate fudge cake, hid it in the laundry room to cool and went to run some errands. Brett was gone for 20 minutes and came back inside to this...
Yes, that is a half eaten cake courtesy of Ace. When he called and told me the news, I thought he was joking. Here is a description of the cake, "The irresistible chocolate aroma permeates throughout the house." Ace proved that it was indeed irresistible. I ended up making another cake and watching Ace very closely. Brett made chili and something called bacon explosion. I call it heart attack in a roll. We had 7-layer dip, Chris-kabobs, salsa, deviled eggs, puppy chow, sopapilla cheesecake, cake balls and my football field cake. Everything was amazingly delicious!!
Here is everyone watching the 3D halftime show.
Just having fun!
Meagan playing pool upstairs.
Josh playing darts. I hope he didn't miss the target!
Meagan and Emily
Casey and James
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
